Pages

Feedzilla

Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, in San Francisco in April.Credit

by Stephen Lam/Reuters

You may think you are discreet about your political views. But Facebook,
the world’s largest social media network, has come up with its own
determination of your political leanings, based on your activity on the
site.

And
now, it is easy to find out how Facebook has categorized you — as very
liberal or very conservative, or somewhere in between.

That will bring you to a page with your ad preferences. Under the “Interests” header, click the “Lifestyle and Culture” tab.

Then
look for a box titled “US Politics.” In parentheses, it will describe
how Facebook has categorized you, such as liberal, moderate or
conservative.

(If the “US Politics” box does not show up, click the “See more” button under the grid of boxes.)

Facebook
makes a deduction about your political views based on the pages that
you like — or on your political preference, if you stated one, on your
profile page. If you like the page for Hillary Clinton, Facebook might
categorize you as a liberal.

Even
if you do not like any candidates’ pages, if most of the people who
like the same pages that you do — such as Ben and Jerry’s ice cream —
identify as liberal, then Facebook might classify you as one, too.

Facebook
has long been collecting information on its users, but it recently
revamped the ad preferences page, making it easier to view.

The
information is valuable. Advertisers, including many political
campaigns, pay Facebook to show their ads to specific demographic
groups. The labels Facebook assigns to its users help campaigns more
precisely target a particular audience.

For
instance, Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign has paid for its ads
to be shown to those who Facebook has labeled politically moderate.

Campaigns
can also use the groupings to show different messages to different
supporters. They may want to show an ad to their hard-core supporters,
for example, that is unlike an ad targeted at people just tuning in to
the election.

It
is not clear how aggressively Facebook is gathering political
information on users outside the United States. The social network has
1.7 billion active users, including about 204 million in the United
States.

Political
outlook is just one of the attributes Facebook compiles on its users.
Many of the others are directly commercial: whether you like television
comedy shows, video games or Nascar.

To
learn more about how political campaigns are targeting voters on social
media, The New York Times is collecting Facebook ads from our readers
with a project called AdTrack. You can take part by visiting nytimes.com and searching for “Send us the political ads.”